SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today stated that the world is still far from the goal set by the Paris Conference on Climate Change because the signatories to the Paris Pact have not reduced emissions from their territories.

Speaking on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taking place at Sharm el-Sheikh, Prime Minister Shtayyeh added that instead of decreasing, emissions are still increasing as the greenhouse gas effect is still noticeable.

He went on to say that funding is required to reduce much more funding than the currently available is required to invest in clean energy, while pointing that renewable energy requires infrastructure and that concessional funding from industrialized countries must be an ethical issue and a collective responsibility and not just based on profit.

He also pointed out that serious efforts must be made to achieve the desired goal of adaptation to climate change, affirming that the world faces deadly climate realities such as floods, droughts, fires, and hurricanes, which are a matter of “life or death” for the entire world.

He noted that aid from rich countries, even if it is small, has a great impact, stressing that it is the poor in the world who pay the price of emissions produced in rich countries, explaining that failure to control climate change is a slow death sentence against life, economic and environmental systems, as some countries and cities are threatened with death and disappearance in the sea.

Meanwhile, Shtayyeh said the Israeli occupation, through colonial settlements, is destroying the nature, depleting natural resources, dumping its solid and dangerous waste in Palestinian lands, stealing water and uprooting our trees.

He revealed that more than 2.5 million trees have been uprooted since 1967, including 800,000 olive trees, while affirming that studies also indicate that the Dead Sea is under existential danger due to its depletion by Israel.

Shtayyeh reiterated that the Israeli occupation, with its entire settler-colonial system, extracts Palestinian national resources worth USD 41 billion annually, in addition to the depletion of Palestinian water resources.

He explained that the Palestinians have a water deficit of 135 million cubic meters annually, and one Palestinian person consumes a third of the water consumed by an Israeli.

He stressed that Palestine has ratified the climate agreement, and prepared plans for climate adaptation in the sectors of water, agriculture, health, solid waste, transportation and communications.

Palestine implemented hundreds of projects in the fields of clean energy, wastewater treatment and reuse for irrigation, conversion of solid waste into energy, in addition to a greening program involving planting thousands of trees annually.

He also affirmed Palestine’s readiness to contribute to the success of international efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, and hailed the Green Middle East Initiative put forward by Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Shtayyeh concluded that Palestine needs to benefit from international technical and financial mechanisms, including the “Global Environment Facility”, which still limits Palestine’s benefit from the allocations of the transparent allocation system for purely political reasons.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency